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Post by marob on Dec 29, 2022 22:36:11 GMT
I’d already booked for the Liverpool Empire, so it makes no odds to me, but I always feel a tiny little bit happy whenever I see a production go to the Lowry rather than both of ATG’s central Manchester venues.
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Post by talkingheads on Dec 30, 2022 9:10:08 GMT
I really enjoyed this. It was amazing to see Sir Ian tap dancing, he clearly loves panto and it was so lovely to see. John Bishop did well, some nice gags and a good rapport. I have to say that the chap playing Jack was intensely annoying.
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Post by NeilVHughes on Dec 30, 2022 10:32:58 GMT
A top evening, one of the best, the cast are having a blast which carries into to the audience, sat front row, does induce some neck strain and nostril views but more than compensated by being so close to the action that included a high five with John Bishop at the end, left with a big smile on my face, all you could ask for.
Jack was channeling his internal James Corden which could be annoying at times but as with everything Panto just went with it.
After seeing the Palladium Panto in the afternoon this was a breath of fresh air, the Palladium Panto has passed its sell by date, same sketches, different order/story and will happily replace with this production going forward if Ian and the team is tempted back next year.
Nice touch to thank the back stage and front of house team and was graced with musical royalty on my way out as Björn Ulvaeus walked past whilst making his way backstage as I was walking out.
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Post by n1david on Dec 30, 2022 11:22:52 GMT
Jack was channeling his internal James Corden which could be annoying at times but as with everything Panto just went with it.
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Post by theatrenerd on Dec 30, 2022 11:48:38 GMT
Bristol, Leicester and Salford confirmed now.
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Post by Dr Tom on Dec 30, 2022 13:34:42 GMT
They only need a few more venues and it can keep touring ready for a West End return for Christmas 2023!
(booked in for tomorrow through the weekly rush and looking forward to it)
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Post by mrbarnaby on Dec 30, 2022 16:58:45 GMT
According to AJ Caseys Insta the Devine Miss M was in the audience last night. BETTE MIDLER?!!!
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Post by Rory on Dec 30, 2022 20:25:05 GMT
According to AJ Caseys Insta the Devine Miss M was in the audience last night. BETTE MIDLER?!!! Yep!!
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Post by stevemar on Dec 31, 2022 14:55:17 GMT
I really enjoyed this - great entertainment, and a real ensemble piece.
Hadn’t seen John Bishop on stage before, and he had great interaction with the audience. Sir Ian McKellen was excellent of course and gave it his all, even though he may have had a heavy cold.
I think any weaknesses are down to the writing - the king of Gooseland was rather saddled with a laugh free dialogue. I enjoyed the singing - high praise to Anna Jane Casey and the good/bad witches who nailed their performances.
Thank you to Steve for the tip for the front row seats which were good value. Yes, looking upwards, but fine with booster seats and pretty immersive. Lovely to get sweets and a £50 Gooseland note, a few winks/smiles from JB and hi-five from him and err, the bat.
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Post by Dr Tom on Dec 31, 2022 19:25:57 GMT
Enjoyed this today at the 12 noon performance. Strong writing in the first half and the show seemed longer than two and a half hours. I don't know Mother Goose very well, so I'm not sure how traditional this is. I would have cut the joke about the Pope today though. Plenty of jokes about a former PM, but don't know if they will last the tour, it's already hard to remember who she was.
It seems odd having a member of the cast having to come on stage and explain what a pantomime is at the start, but I guess that's for the tourist market who think they are seeing Gandalf. JB used exactly the same joke about an elderly theatregoer as at the pantomime I was at yesterday too.
There's a lot more audience interaction that I'd have expected (all in a good natured way). If you don't want to speak, don't say if you haven't seen a pantomime before. They also brought a little girl on stage.
The cast have a much better aim with water than with sweets (at least in my direction). I can confirm it hurts if a giant beach ball hits you in the back of the head without warning.
Lots of ad-libbing with the microphones conveniently turned on at the right times. Everyone does seem to be enjoying themselves. I presume the Good Fairy falling over during the bows does not happen every show.
Sir Ian gets more innuendo in this than Julian Clary in the Palladium! I'm not sure what the parents thought who brought young children. Nothing terribly offensive (just one "f" word that half slips through) but I imagine many children would be bored. The one near me (around 10) did not seem to be enjoying himself at all, his mother then spent much of the interval tickling him (as you do), but he perked up a bit when one of the small footballs ended up with him in the second half (and no way was he letting that go).
Got to say that Sir Ian puts Clare Halse to shame in the 42nd Street sequence! The whole show is jammed full of musical theatre references. The audience as a whole was not picking up on a lot of them (or I was the only person who found them funny enough to laugh at). Speaking of which, I did find the whole show rather funny, laughing out loud, which is something I rarely do.
There's a very funny cake making scene too (the teenage lad near me was in total hysterics). The cast come into the audience at various times, so you've most chance of interaction if you're on an aisle or on the front row.
Recommended anyway. Check out the weekly rush, I was in Row G in what would otherwise have been a premium seat. The only downside is the rake in the Stalls is not brilliant, so you may have heads in view (as I had), but it's possible to see most things.
And that is 2022 over. A fabulous way to end the year!
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Post by Marwood on Jan 12, 2023 23:20:00 GMT
Saw this tonight and thoroughly enjoyed it: I had a seat at the end of the front row and when I sat down and saw how high the stage was I was dreading getting a cricked neck after fifteen minutes and only seeing the actors from their knees up but it was a really good view: I had to strain a couple of times to see some of what was happening in the middle of the stage (ie the snail) but I couldn’t fault the seat (although I missed out when the chocolates were thrown out, I think the turtle felt sorry for me and bunged me a consolation Bounty, but then again I didn’t have to worry when the eggs were lobbed into the audience, and yes one of the big footballs whacked me on the back of the head but I didn’t go into shock)
There were a couple of little children in the audience (God knows what they made of seeing Gandalf in a frock) but the level of humour wasn’t aimed too low to force them to ask their parents embarrassing questions. I was dreading it being like one of those godawful ‘adult’ pantos Jim Davidson used to do with the likes of Charlie Drake but I thought it was more like a mild version of Up Pompeii, especially when the Goose King shouted out ‘shut yer face!’
The music was fine, well performed by the cast but not the sort of stuff I listen to at home but I got the impression the playlist was inspired by the type of places Ian McKellen has been frequenting for the last 50 years or so and I did get up and dance at the end so as not to look like Stadtler or Waldorf so I can say I’ve danced a few feet away from Ian McKellen 😝
Tonight’s show was introduced by John Bishop as the first night on tour where they had someone captioning what was happening with sign language: I couldn’t follow all that she was doing from where I was sitting but it certainly added something to see her out of the corner of my eye.
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Post by thistimetomorrow on Jan 12, 2023 23:41:48 GMT
I was there tonight too! I had a wonderful time and really enjoyed myself.
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Post by Marwood on Jan 13, 2023 14:57:54 GMT
Didn’t realise it at the time but looking at the program when I got home, I saw that the Goose King and the goat were played by Adam Brown, who played Ori in The Hobbit series of films: is he the first/only actor from the Lord Of The Rings/Hobbit films that McKellen has worked with on stage?
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Post by David J on Jan 13, 2023 15:07:55 GMT
Didn’t realise it at the time but looking at the program when I got home, I saw that the Goose King and the goat were played by Adam Brown, who played Ori in The Hobbit series of films: is he the first/only actor from the Lord Of The Rings/Hobbit films that McKellen has worked with on stage? Sylvestor McCoy played the Fool the first time Ian played King Lear in 2007
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Post by Marwood on Jan 13, 2023 20:08:40 GMT
Didn’t realise it at the time but looking at the program when I got home, I saw that the Goose King and the goat were played by Adam Brown, who played Ori in The Hobbit series of films: is he the first/only actor from the Lord Of The Rings/Hobbit films that McKellen has worked with on stage? Sylvestor McCoy played the Fool the first time Ian played King Lear in 2007 I meant after the films were made: The Hobbit didn’t start filming until a few years after that (don’t know if McKellen recommended McCoy to Peter Jackson)
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Post by mkb on Jan 16, 2023 1:19:13 GMT
"Oh no, there are water guns. Quick! Cover the programme!", I beseeched my husband. Unfortunately, as his head went down reaching to the floor, my hand went up to deflect a giant, inflatable ball. The resulting collision knocked out my poor partner's contact lens and tore a two-inch scratch across his face. (Note to self: fingernails need cutting.)
So Act 2 went well!
While I await potential spousal retribution from the "where there's blame, there's a claim", ambulance-chasing lawyers, I must mull over whether Mother Goose was worth it.
The answer, sadly, is probably not. It was ok, but well short of expectations. (Hubby however disagreed, and enjoyed himself despite being laid seige to.)
I enjoyed the bonkers book, and the pacing and running time were fine. The problem was the jokes. There just wasn't much that tickled my sense of humour. John Bishop is a thoroughly decent guy, but I've never been a fan of his stand-up. There's nothing wrong with it if your on that wavelength. It's just not mine. Here of course, he's delivering lines from Jonathan Harvey rather than his own material.
I had the pleasure of seeing Ken Dodd live once. Only about one in four of his one-liners was actually funny to me, but they came so thick and fast that, overall, you were laughing a lot. The hit-rate in Mother Goose is lower, as is the speed of delivery, so I had the occasional chortle and a few smiles, but mainly groans. The political digs, which I usually enjoy, were neither clever nor original.
Harvey is writing here in his Gimme Gimme Gimme mode, but heavily filtered by the constraints of 2023 social mores. So, it's a lot less filthy, and less amusing as a result. That said, a few gags, relying on "fairies" and "what happens in Brighton" as code for "homosexual", did make it through. I regard that sort of Carry On humour as harmless fun, but I can imagine the outrage if it were penned by a heterosexual.
When you pay full price for a panto at the Palladium, you can see where your money has been spent. It's grand and opulent with a good orchestra. Not so here. One presumes that the two leads are the principal outlay. The production is rather rough round the edges and quite am-dram at times. Some characters were not properly lit when it seemed they should be, and pyrotechnic effects that greeted every entrance of the fairies were oddly placed 2m in front of them, level with the second row of stalls seats. From my perspective in the centre of the third row, this looked quite peculiar. The musical number One from A Chorus Line seemed to be largely voiced by pre-recorded vocals.
It was telling that it was thought necessary to have Bishop deliver a five-minute, how-to-behave-at-panto monologue at the top of the show. A good panto shouldn't need expectation setting.
Happily, the supporting cast are on good form and Ian McKellen's Caroline Goose is magnificent. The contortions into which he can distort the outlines of his overly lipsticked lips is quite something to behold.
If you can get a cheap ticket on tour, Mother Goose is not a bad shout. Just don't make the mistake I did and think it would be worth shelling out for at full price. It's not *that* good.
Three stars.
Act 1: 17:07-18:22 with 5-minute monologue from John Bishop until 17:12 Act 2: 18:44-19:36
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Post by Marwood on Jan 25, 2023 23:48:19 GMT
I don’t think it was the book that kept this ticking along when I saw it, it was the improv and the spur of the moment comments that made it enjoyable (ie McKellen getting whacked on the arse by Jack and saying it wasn’t like that in rehearsals, the night I went): I went to one of John Bishops work in progress nights at the Leicester Square Theatre tonight and apart from him repeating the story about looking for a dog at Battersea Dogs Home (with BSL) he told the night I saw it, the story about his son being in tears getting to meet Gandalf just added to my good memories of this show, just about every other pantomime put on this day seems to just be an excuse to out some z listers on the stage.
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Post by mkb on Jan 26, 2023 0:55:30 GMT
One of the skills of a good actor is to make scripted lines appear to be improv.
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Post by david on Mar 1, 2023 0:31:59 GMT
Just got back from tonight's show at the Liverpool Empire. A really great show with a wonderful cast and a really enthusiastic and engaging audience. There was plenty of light-hearted banter between the audience and cast which made for a fantastic evening's theatrical entertainment. It might not be panto season, but that didn't stop anybody from having a brilliant night out.
Having booked what was described as a limited view stalls seat (A47) for £22, quite honestly, I really couldn't fault the view and for the price was an absolute steal to see Sir Ian up close living his best life on the stage. Both him and John Bishop made a great double act. Sir Ian was just amazing, full of energy and humour and a really good song and dance man as well. I loved the different frocks he got to wear over the course of the evening.
Jonathan Harvey has done a good job with the bonkers book and all the gags landed with the audience. With a great mixture of both physical humour (the kitchen cake baking scene was a particular favourite of mine) and some witty jokes this really is the show to lift people's spirits.
The musical numbers on the whole worked for me and Anna-Jane Casey, again what a lady. A great voice and stage presence. She never disappoints when I have seen her in shows. Also a shout out to the ladies playing the good and bad witches. Great vocals from them with their numbers.
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Post by ruthieh on Mar 7, 2023 22:54:06 GMT
Opening night tonight at Oxford, nearly full, mainly adult audience…but what a great show this is! As others have said Sir Ian and John Bishop both give great performances, clearly having fun…but Anna-Jane Casey is stand out for me!
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Post by ilovewemusicals on Mar 9, 2023 22:22:10 GMT
Saw this in Liverpool and it was a refreshing change from seeing Crossroads pantos which tend to use the same comedy scenes and TwinFX contraptions every year.
This panto was a much more old school affair albeit with references to current political events, but its star (the 83 year old legendary thespian Sir Ian McKellen) bounces around the stage as if he’s 18. His comic timing and chemistry with John Bishop is superb. He’s not afraid to make a fool of himself and the audience loves him even more for it.
There are so many references to famous plays and musicals throughout the panto that it’s a theatre fan’s dream; especially Anna-Jane Casey leading One and Don’t Rain on my Parade in act two.
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Post by mrbarnaby on Mar 9, 2023 22:55:36 GMT
Why on earth would anyone go and see a panto in March?
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Mar 9, 2023 23:27:47 GMT
Celebrating Easter… early? 🤷🏻♂️
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Post by Being Alive on Mar 10, 2023 0:05:58 GMT
Why on earth would anyone go and see a panto in March? I guess because this isnt remotely Christmasy it is just a bit like a variety show?
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Post by bimse on Apr 9, 2023 16:50:14 GMT
I loved this in Salford today, it’s a refreshing and very funny take on the unique British pantomime tradition . Ian McKellan and John Bishop are absolute joys, and Anna Jane Casey is a wonderfully impressive singing goose. I particularly enjoyed the kitchen scene, and the aircraft scene, so funny and in true panto style . I wouldn’t take very young kids, at the 12 o’clock show I attended, a few very young children had been brought along, but they seemed restless and I’m sure most of it went over their heads. All told , a very happy and cheerful show.
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